I got the last lazy newb pack(34.11) with the LAA installed, and have used it a few times to make a 16x16 embark to inspect a curious height map I saw.
As far as I know however, there is no way to make a 16x16 embark be anything other then a slide show.
As much as I hate disabling parts of the game, you(OP) may want to get the Lazy newb pack, or the starter pack, as the windows version is called now, and disable temperature, weather, liquid depth, and aquifers, as well as setting a lower population cap, about 100, or maybe as low as 50, those are the biggest FPS hog features
dfhack also has a few helpful commands, the "Single Pick Challenge - Reawakened" lets play recently got a huge FPS boost by running dfhack clean all(although that's making 30 years of crap vanish, FPS gain with young fortresses may be much less)
I also admit being very fond of doing "dfhack cleanowned scattered", but that's mostly because pointless(untouchable due to ownership) crap like old socks scattered around every corridor and room, annoys my OCD quite bad..
And on the Vista hate, I used Vista for many years, upgraded to 7, ONLY because of driver support issues, I see no performance gain worth mentioning, I play every game I can with the FPS counter on, and I run a LOT of benchmarks regularly, to compare every time there is a graphics driver update, for example.
Disclamer: Windows Vista WITHOUT service pack 1, is still best compared to Windows ME.